Magic Kills Industry

First held as a lecture in 2015, Horgan was commissioned to make Magic Kills Industry into an essay film for Waking the Witch. It can be viewed in its entirety in the exhibition as well as online.

Magic Kills Industry takes its starting point in Silvia Federici’s text Caliban and the Witch, which looks at the power mechanisms involved in the evolution of capitalism as seen through the control exerted over female bodies in the British witchcraft trials. The film highlights how the consolidation of power, wealth and land by a few was happening at a time when power was being taken away from workers through the creation of a new sexual division of labour and a ‘professionalisation’ of the traditional female roles of healers midwives and herbalists. Touching on the hostility of an industrialising economy to magical thinking, Horgan traces a line to present day discussions around post-human and cyborg theory.